Math Forum - Project of the Month

January 1999 Project of the Month

A Coloring Exercise

Okay, a simple little coloring exercise. Make sure you thoroughly explain how you figured it out, because I haven't done it yet.

In the picture below, a square is split into 8 equal parts. How many different ways can you color in exactly half of the blocks? There's a small catch - two colorings are considered the same if they could be rotated or flipped to match up, so be careful!